1 Early life and education
2 Early political activity
3 Treaty and after
4 References

Early life and education[edit]
O'Flanagan was born at Kilkeeven, near Castlerea, County Roscommon,
the elder son of Edward Flanagan, a smallholding farmer and Mary
Crawley. O'Flanagan's parents were bilingual in Irish and English,
engaged in
FenianFenian politics, and members of the Land League. Michael
went to national school at Cloonboniffe and secondary school as a
boarder at
Summerhill CollegeSummerhill College in Sligo, growing very tall. He
matriculated in
St Patrick's College, MaynoothSt Patrick's College, Maynooth in 1894 and was a
brilliant student, winning prizes in theology, scripture, canon law,
Irish language, education, and natural science. In later years he
filed patents for protective goggles and house insulation products. He
was ordained for the Diocese of Elphin on 15 August 1900 and returned
to
Summerhill CollegeSummerhill College as Professor of Irish until 1904. The position
kindled his enthusiasm for the Gaelic revival. His organisation of the
SligoSligo Feis, a nationalist festival, attracted the attention of Sinn
Féin.[1]
Early political activity[edit]
O'Flanagan supported rural development and Irish self-reliance. He was
a skilled orator and started agitating for radical social and
political change. In 1904 he was invited to speak on a tour of the
United States by his bishop John Joseph Clancy and Horace Plunkett. He
was sent to find investment for agricultural and industrial projects
in the west of Ireland. In August 1910 he was elected to the executive
of the
Gaelic LeagueGaelic League with Fionan MacColuim. His clerical career was
hampered by his outspokenness, but through Clancy's political sympathy
he was appointed a curate in
RoscommonRoscommon in 1912. The same year, Clancy
died and his successor, Bernard Coyne was a conservative who
deprecated O'Flanagan's perceived modernism. With his ecclesiastical
prospects dim, O'Flanagan began to focus on his political activity.
In 1913, the "advanced nationalist" Keating Branch took control of the
Gaelic LeagueGaelic League and O'Flanagan was elected to the Standing Committee for
two years. After the outbreak of the First World War, he was sent[by
whom?] to neutral Italy to advocate Irish independence in Rome. On 1
August 1914, Coyne transferred him to
CliffoneyCliffoney and Grange parish in
north county Sligo. There he called for land redistribution to his
parishioners, condemned the export of food from the area, and demanded
a continuation of turbary rights. In newspaper pieces he contrasted
Irish opinion-makers' outrage against Germany's contemporary treatment
of Belgium with their indifference to England's ongoing treatment of
Ireland.[2]
In 1915 O'Flanagan was transferred to Cootehall,
County RoscommonCounty Roscommon and
was sanctioned by Coyne when accused of making a speech disloyal to
the Crown: he had spoken against war-related taxes at the funeral of
the
FenianFenianJeremiah O'Donovan RossaJeremiah O'Donovan Rossa .[3] He also offended nationalists
in a letter to the
Freeman's Journal in June 1916 when he supported
David Lloyd George's proposal to implement the 1914 Home Rule Act
outside the six counties.[4] He felt partition was preferable to
continued unionist.
At the 1917
Sinn FéinSinn Féin convention, the
Easter RisingEaster Rising veterans merged
with Arthur Griffith's older organisation, with Éamon de Valera
becoming president, and Griffith and O'Flanagan as vice presidents,
for a three-year term. O'Flanagan proved a highly effective party
manager. After the May 1918 "German Plot",
Sinn FéinSinn Féin leaders were
interned, but O'Flanagan was exempted as a priest. During the autumn
general election campaign he toured the country talking to candidates
and crowds. He was censored by the bishop but stated that it was
essential to Ireland that East Cavan elect a
Sinn FéinSinn Féin candidate.
Nonetheless he became more queasy about the increasing level of
violence deployed by the Irish Republican Army, and shrank from
appearing with them in public. The
Sinn FéinSinn Féin candidates abstained
from Westminster and instead proclaimed an
Irish RepublicIrish Republic with Dáil
Éireann as its parliament. At the First Dáil's inauguration in
January 1919, O'Flanagan recite prayers and was appointed its
chaplain. On the Republic's Land Executive he was responsible for
propaganda and agriculture in County Roscommon. By December 1920, with
de Valera in the United States, O'Flanagan was acting president of the
party.
Treaty and after[edit]
In late January 1921, during the Irish War of Independence, O'Flanagan
and judge James O'Connor met informally in London with Sir Edward
Carson to discuss a peaceful solution to the conflict, but without
success.[5] He also had talks with prime minister Lloyd George and
found
DominionDominion status for the
Irish Free StateIrish Free State acceptable.[6] His
critics accused him of waving a "white flag" but when the Anglo-Irish
Treaty was signed in December 1921, O'Flanagan like his friend John J.
O'Kelly was strongly opposed, and he left Ireland in fear of his life,
arriving in the United States in November 1921.[contradictory] In 1923
he went to Australia and met the politically sympathetic Archbishop of
Melbourne, Daniel Mannix, before being deported. He returned to
Ireland from the United States in April 1925.
In March 1926, the
Sinn FéinSinn Féin ard fheis narrowly defeated de Valera's
proposal to enter the Free State Oireachtas if the Oath of Allegiance
were removed. O'Flanagan sided with the majority. De Valera left to
found Fianna Fáil, which eclipsed
Sinn FéinSinn Féin at the June 1927
election. O'Flanagan remained with the reduced Sinn Féin. In 1927 he
was suspended from clerical duties because of his nationalist
activities. Bishop Coyne finally died in July 1926, which lifted the
ban on his ministry,[contradictory] though he was never promoted in
the hierarchy. He expressed brotherhood with union leader James Larkin
and some
MarxistMarxist sentiment but never joined any left-wing group,
though he maintained his radical stance on social issues in the
republican journal An Phoblacht.[4]
O'Flanagan undertook academic work at this time, editing for
publication in 1927–8 several volumes of the 1830s Ordnance Survey
of Ireland notebooks. He was commissioned by the government to write a
history of the
Irish languageIrish language for schools; five of the ten parts were
published. He was elected president of
Sinn FéinSinn Féin from October 1933 to
1935, when he was expelled from the party for taking a state job on
the
Placenames CommissionPlacenames Commission and participating in a Radio Éireann
programme.[7]
Brian O'HigginsBrian O'Higgins and
Mary MacSwineyMary MacSwiney resigned in protest
at O'Flanagan's presidency.[clarification needed][6] In 1936 he took
part in a re-enactment of the Dáil re-opening, interpreting it as a
triumph,[vague] and he was expelled by the purists in his
party;[contradictory] later re-joining. He sympathised with Italian
fascists when they invaded Abyssinia because they were enemies of
Britain. He was one of the few Catholic priests to defend the Spanish
Republic during the Spanish Civil War.[8]
On 3 April 1939, he was restored to his faculties by a bishop Edward
Doorly.[contradictory] In retirement he moved to Dublin, and acted as
chaplain of two convents and a hospital. He died in a Dublin nursing
home of stomach cancer on 7 August 1942.
References[edit]